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Living on Water: Stilted Villages

After visiting the legendary floating villages on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, I took a detour to Kompong Phluk, a permanent settlement built upon stilts at the edge of the lake. As I paddled through the brackish water, it was a breathtaking sight to see homes, cooking, fishing, and everyday life soaring above me.

Kompong Phluk is a village of around 100 stilted homes, located on one of the northern-central tributaries of the Tonle Sap lake. Meandering along the waterway through the village, I watched as men dried fish on mats, women collecting throngs of pink shrimp, and children playing a game of tag while balancing on their boats.

I was lucky enough to be visiting during the dry season, when water levels in the lake are lower and all of the stilted structures below the living areas are revealed. Many families use the lower areas for storage during the dry season, putting aside fishing nets and cookingware, or hanging clothes to dry.

The small tributary eventually broadens to become the sweeping Tonle Sap lake, the largest inland body of water in Southeast Asia. During the fishing season, one can always see many small fishing boats punctuating the seemingly infinite ocean landscape.